Thursday, June 30, 2016

Well, i tunes got
some more of my business this week. I
was thinking about how to begin this sermon and this old song popped into my
head. I thought for sure I had it on my
i pod, but alas, I did not. But i tunes
had it. “Apple, peaches, pumpkin pie.”

Fruit – apples,
peaches, pumpkin. One of the things I
really like about summertime is the fresh fruit you can buy and eat. Cherries are out and delicious. Berries are no longer $4 for a
half-pint. Traveling in parts of the
U.S. you might find fruit stands – apples, peaches, plums.

Fruit is the focus
of today’s sermon. No, not the fruit
that grows on trees or vines, but “fruit” that can grow in our lives –
“spiritual fruit.”

Galatians 5:23-24
are some of my favorite verses in the Bible.
I have this list memorized: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. If I stumble it is because I first memorized
the list of the fruits of the Spirit from the Revised Standard Version, and one
word changed when the Revised Standard Version became the new Revised Standard
Version in 1989. In the RSV it was love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. In 1989, goodness became
generosity. Bible translation is not an
exact science. Language usage
changes. Our understanding of words
morphs.

Anyway, I love
this passage because I think it is helpful to think about where we are going,
to consider what life under the influence of God’s Spirit looks like. When trying to describe what being a follower
of Jesus is like, what life deeply shaped by God’s Spirit is like, Paul reaches
for an agricultural metaphor, “fruit.”
Disciples of Jesus, people on the Jesus Way, people shaped by God’s
Spirit produce these kinds of things in their lives: love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

That these are
among my favorite verses in the Bible, and that I am passionate about thinking
about what life in Jesus, in the Spirit, looks like is very Wesleyan, very
United Methodist. One Bible I own is the
“Wesley Study Bible.” It is a NRSV Bible
but with footnotes provided by Wesleyan scholars and teachers. Under Galatians 5, they identify “fruits of
the Spirit” as a “Wesleyan core term.”
The text was often alluded to by Wesley.
Even if the text is not alluded to, the idea that we need to consider
“fruit,” that we need to think about where we are going in this life with
Jesus, is something Wesley emphasized over and over again.

In his sermon on
“The Nature of Enthusiasm” which I cited a few weeks ago, Wesley discusses “the
will of God” and believes there is a general rule about what God’s will for our
lives is. The will of God is our sanctification.
It is God’s will that we should be inwardly and outwardly holy; that we
should be good, and do good, in every kind and in the highest degree whereof we
are capable (Forty-Four Sermons, 423).

Wesley offered a
series of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, and in thirteenth in the series,
he shared that whatever creeds we may
rehears, whatever professions of faith we make, whatever number of prayers we
may repeat, whatever thanksgivings we read or say to God… the heart of the
matter is to be a person who loves the
Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his mind, and soul, and strength
and who in this spirit, does good unto
all (371, 374). In the ninth sermon
on The Sermon on the Mount, Wesley asserted that we love and serve God by
imitating God. Their soul is all love. They are
kind, benevolent, compassionate, tender-hearted; and that not only to the good
and gentle, but also to the froward [speaking of language changing, this is
the opposite of “toward” and mean a contrary person] (326).

My favorite
expressions of John Wesley’s view of where the Christian life is headed, what
life with Jesus can be, what life profoundly influenced by God’s Spirit can be
is his simple definition of “Christian perfection.” Wesley wrote in 1767: By perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our
neighbor, ruling our habits, attitudes, words, and actions.

I think it is
helpful to think about where we are going, to consider what life under the
influence of God’s Spirit looks like. In
that I am very Wesleyan, very United Methodist.
I have often used my own list of five to talk about what life on the
journey with Jesus can be, what life in the Spirit can and should be: joy,
genuineness, gentleness, generosity and justice. What Paul’s list of fruits of the Spirit,
what John Wesley’s words about perfection, what my list of five all seek is to
give us some help along the spiritual journey.
They help us ask, “are we headed in the right direction?” They remind us of what is most important in
this life with the God of Jesus Christ.
They remind us of why we are here as a church, a community of Jesus.

We are here to
connect our lives more deeply with God so that our lives are made different and
through our transformed lives, the world is transformed. Part of the transformation of our lives is to
care about the transformation of the world.
Thinking about Paul’s list, or Wesley’s idea of growing in love, or my
list of five, the question is, how are you doing? Are you growing? Are we as a community helping each other
grow?

There is another
dimension to this, another way to explore this idea of fruits and growth. As mentioned in the children’s time, fruit
grows from trees and trees grow from the seeds found in the fruit. We need seeds. We need seeds planted in our souls if we are
to grow spiritual fruit. The list Paul
provides is also a spiritual seed catalogue.
You want to produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – plant seeds of love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. You want to grow in the humble, gentle,
patient love of God and our neighbor, have it rule habits, attitudes, words,
and actions? Plant seeds of humble,
gentle, patient love. You want to grow in
joy, genuineness, gentleness, generosity and justice? Plant seeds of joy, genuineness, gentleness,
generosity and justice. Plant seeds in
your own life. Plant seeds in the lives
of others. Somehow these kind of seeds
have a unique quality. When you plant
them in others they seem also to get planted in yourself.

And here’s the
other part of such planting. You have
all you need to plant such seeds. You
need not be great, important, noteworthy in anyone else’s eyes. You are special to God. You matter to this Jesus community. You can do what you can with the seeds that
you have. I came across this wonderful
poem preparing for this morning called “Accepting This.” It is about beginning to plant seeds of
goodness where we are. Here is one
stanza of the poem.

We cannot eliminate
hunger,

but we can feed each
other.

We cannot eliminate
loneliness,

But we can hold each
other.

We cannot eliminate
pain,

but we can live a life

of compassion.

Floods
in West Virginia, a gunman taking hostages in a German movie theater, the Pulse
Nightclub shooting – events can feel overwhelming. There are times when we need look no further
than our own front doors to feel overwhelmed – family illnesses or stresses. Sometimes we need look no further than the
mirror to feel overwhelmed – our own emotions and questions creating internal
chaos. Begin where you are. Plant the seeds you can plant, and more seeds
will come.

This
past week at the Minnesota Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church in
St. Cloud we were invited to go into the community to bless others, simply to
say hello and hear their story. Julie,
Laura, Dale and I went to eat at a small Greek restaurant near the convention
center on our way to the park where we were all gathering Tuesday evening. I asked the young man taking our order about
himself. Myron had worked there about
five months. He was from Sri Lanka and
had attended school for a year in St. Cloud.
I told him that United Methodists were gathering in St. Cloud, and
connecting with people and asked if I could take a picture with him. He obliged.
I thanked him for his work and for his willingness to help me with my
conference assignment. Arriving at the
park, Julie and I took a walk around the lake.
Nearing the end of the walk, I ran into a woman who was having a picnic
with children and friends. I told her
about what was happening in the park, and she told me that her son was so
excited, because they were there to celebrate his birthday, and there was music
and games around. We were making his
birthday special. I asked her if I could
take a picture with she and her son and another child. She obliged.
Later I saw her helping some of us United Methodists put together health
kits. Small acts, but some seeds planted
– hopefully in the souls of those people I met, and certainly in my own soul.

This
list of fruits of the Spirit Paul provides is a check-up list. Are you growing? It is a seed catalogue for the soul. Are you sowing? Start from where you are, and here is another
poem that reminds me of all this – Emily Dickinson.

This
is a piece called “The Unanswered Question” and the composer is the American
Charles Ives. I first encountered the
music of Charles Ives in college, in a course called “Arts in America.” One of the things that troubles me a bit
about the world today is that we have become so career focused that young
people in college have very little ability to take a course or two simply
because they are interested in the content, because they might want to explore
new ideas. The cost of higher education
also plays a role here.

Ives
was an American composer from the early twentieth century. This particular piece has a haunting quality
about it, and it reminds me of the story of Elijah on Mount Horeb. Remember, Elijah is on the run from Jezebel,
again Jezebel – just like last week a wicked figure. God tells Elijah to go to the mountain where
God will meet him. There is a strong
wind, but no God. There was an
earthquake, but no God. There was a
raging fire, but no God. Then comes “a
sound of sheer silence” and God.

Quick
cut to the other Scripture we read for this morning and it could not be more
different. It is chaotic and noisy. Jesus and the disciples arrive at the country
of the Geresenes, and there they are greeted by a naked, shouting man, a person
who lived among the tombs, a man driven by demons into the wild. A legion of demons speaks out of this
suffering man, asking Jesus not to send them into the abyss. The demons are sent into a heard of swine who
rush headlong into a lake. The scene is
wild and frenzied.

Hearing
of the incident, crowds gathered – wondering and fearful. The wild man is healed. Jesus tells his to go and share his
story. So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had
done for him.

Doesn’t
this sound chaotic and noisy and wild and frenzied – more like strong winds,
earthquakes and raging fire than like the sound of sheer silence? I want to draw two broad lessons for our
lives from all this, and within the second lesson go a little deeper.

The
first broad lesson is this: God can be heard in the sound of sheer silence, in
the gentle, quiet whisper, but God’s voice is not always so quiet. God can also be heard in joyous sounds and
songs. I contrast that Charles Ives
piece with a concert I attended recently, through the gracious generosity of a
friend. The week before General
Conference, I had two meetings in the Twin Cities, one a training for small
group leaders for clergy groups in the Minnesota Conference, and the other the
mandatory clergy ethics and boundary training I mentioned a couple of weeks
ago. Well, the night of the clergy
ethics and boundary training, Paul McCartney was playing a concert in the Twin
Cities, and, as mentioned, through the grace and generosity of a friend, I was
able to attend. It was loud, it was
joyous, and there were times when I was moved in deep places in my heart and
soul, places where God speaks. Music is
often for me a way the Spirit touches me, speaks to me and it can be the quiet
sound of Charles Ives or Paul McCartney singing “We Can Work It Out” the week
before General Conference.

God
can speak even in the joyous songs of life, yet God’s primary voice is the
whisper. Theologian Marjorie Suchocki
writes: God’s word is hidden
incarnationally in the world. It is a
whisper. (The Whispered Word, 6).

So
I was thinking about our auditory capacity as humans. We have two ears, unless something has
happened along the way. So in a
metaphorical way, perhaps we can think of our life in the Spirit as having one
ear tuned to the whisper of God in the sound of sheer silence, and the other
ear tuned to the world – its screams, its cries, its anguish, its songs of hope
and joy. We listen for the sounds of
screaming silence.

Jesus,
it is reported, sometimes stole away to quiet places, wanting to listen for
that whisper of God. Jesus also went to
places like the country of the Geresenes, encountering a wild, frenzied man,
noisy crowds, chaos. As he listened to
the whisper of God and to the anguished cries of a hurting person isolated from
the community, healing could happen. The
Paul Simon song we used in the call to worship is a warning about the dangers
of a certain kind of silence, of silencing the voices of anguish, the cries of
pain in our world, and of being silent in the midst of them. Jesus uses both ears – an ear attuned to the
whisper of God and an ear attuned to the cries of the world, and we are invited
to do the same.

We
don’t have to work very hard to hear cries of hurt, pain and anguish. Our nation is still reeling from the shooting
last Sunday in Orlando. We prayed for
the victims and the community last Sunday, not knowing many of the
details. What has become clearer since
is that the shooting was motivated by hatred, hatred directed toward LGBTQ
persons. While we are all affected, and
we all feel pain and grief, it is the LGBTQ community that we particularly need
to listen to. This week on CNN, there
was a brief history of some similar incidents of violence directed toward LGBTQ
persons – other nightclub shootings, and arsons.

Friends
I know that human sexuality is a topic that is difficult. It strikes deeply into our identity. It touches our deepest selves. Maybe getting close to this is like getting
close to the naked man living in the tombs – it is a little frightful. Challenging as it may be, we need to hear the
cries of anguish and pain from our LGBTQ neighbors and friends.

It
is now about a year since the shooting in Charleston, SC, a shooting directed
at the African-American community. We
need to listen to the cries of anguish and pain from our African-American
sisters and brothers.

We
need to listen to the voices of all those who have lost loved ones to violence,
and ask what we can to better as a human community.

We
need to listen to the anguished cries of all those marginalized in our world,
all those seemingly consigned to living among the tombs – the hungry, the destitute,
the bullied – and when we hear those voices, those screams, with our other ears
we need to listen for the still small voice of God’s Spirit.

The
sounds of the world are not only cries of anguish and pain, however. There are songs of hope and joy. The novelist Darcey Steinke, whose father was
a pastor, wrote in her memoir, Easter Everywhere: Life is brutal, full of horror and violence. Life is beautiful, full of passion and
joy. Both things are true at the same
time. (219) We need to listen to
both kinds of sounds. At the end of the
story, the healed man proclaims all that Jesus had done for him. There is a joyous voice.

The
idea of listening to both voices of the world was brought home to me again by
another voice, this the voice of a young woman I met a few of years ago when
she was a young delegate at General Conference from Michigan. She is now living in London, and this week she
posted these thoughts on Facebook, and I asked if I could use them in today’s
sermon. So thanks to Rebecca Farnum.

Tears finally came
today. Since waking on Sunday, I have
been on autopilot, incapable of concentrating on work and unable to properly engage
with people. The emotions were too raw,
too poignant, too conflicting.

And finally, finally,
the dam released. And the tears came.

Tears for families who
lost their loved ones in such a tragic way.

Tears for survivors
who will grapple with horrific memories and what ifs for the rest of their
lives.

Tears for dear ones
who were viscerally reminded of the unjust dangers accompanying their
sexuality.

Tears for beloved
friends who, while fasting during one of the most beautifully reflective
celebrations of their holy year, saw their religion cited as a motivator for
horrific violence and faced accusations against their entire community.

Tears for a man so
broken and failed by the system that his confusion, hatred, and rage came out
in the form of senseless massacre.

Tears for a nation
that has seen this time and time again and still fails to take adequate action
on gun control, mental health care, and hate speech.

America, you are
broken.

World, you are broken.

Humanity, you are
broken.

But oh, you are
beautiful.

For also this week in
the world, a couple gazed adoringly at their adopted daughter as she laughed
for the first time.

We must let the tears
come. There is a time to weep. This is that time.

But we must also let
the smiles come. Because there is a time
to laugh. And this is that time too.

May you mourn. May you rejoice. In the beautiful, broken mess this thing
called life is. And may you know peace.

Listen. Listen with both ears. Hear God’s caring, compassionate voice
embracing you in love – that voice that also calls us to proclaim good news, to
listen to and stand with the hurting, the bruised, the abused, the
marginalized, the victimized, and to do good.
Listen. Live. And may we know peace. Amen.

Sometime
type in your internet search engine- “Greatest movies of all time.” One film that is often near the top of the
list, and is on the top of the list of the American Film Institute’s 100 best
American films, is the movie “Citizen Kane.”
How many of you have ever seen “Citizen Kane”? It was made in 1941, so it is not a very
recent film, but when I asked our daughter Sarah, who is 24, if she had ever
heard of the movie, she had.

“Citizen
Kane” was directed by and starred Orson Welles.
Welles was considered something of a prodigy, a kind of genius. As time rolled on, Welles was often
considered someone whose career peaked early.
He never again quite reached the heights of “Citizen Kane,” though he
lived until 1985. I admit that my
first memories of Orson Welles were of him as a commercial spokesperson for
Paul Masson wines. In his deeply distinct voice Welles would say, “We will sell
no wine before its time.”

So
what does wine connote for you? What do
you think of when you think of wine?
Maybe you don’t think we ought to be thinking about wine in church! For some, of course, wine is problematic
because alcohol has been problematic in their lives or in the lives of others
close to them. We want to be sensitive
to that. More generally, I think that
wine connotes a certain relaxed sociability, a welcoming atmosphere,
hospitality. With wine there is a
certain joy, celebration, companionship, maybe even romance. Go, eat
your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart we read
in Ecclesiastes. The well-known poem,
“The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” celebrates a
book of verse… a jug of wine, a loaf of bread – and thou. These are inviting images, welcoming images.

John
Wesley, to whom Methodists trace their beginnings, spoke strongly against the
abuse of alcohol, particularly distilled liquor. Wesley, however, drank wine, and the story is
told that at one point in his life when he had given this up for some reason,
he decided that he would continue with a little wine so as not to encourage
those among his followers who were trying to make complete abstinence a
requirement for a healthy spirituality. (Dodd, John Wesley: a study for the
times, 14-15. Published in 1891)

Wine
connotes a kind of welcome, hospitality.
So what on earth does that have to do with our Scripture reading for
this morning? There seems little welcome
here, little hospitality. We have here a
story of a man named Naboth who owned a vineyard coveted by King Ahab. Ahab becomes sullen and resentful because
Naboth refuses to see the vineyard to him.
Ahab’s wife Jezebel, and this is where the name Jezebel gets its bad
reputation from, Jezebel devises a scheme to have Naboth invited to a banquet
where false charges will be brought against him and he will be executed. It happens.
Ahab is then free to take Naboth’s vineyard. God is not pleased, and sends Elijah to
confront Ahab with his misdeed. Ahab is
not pleased to see Elijah. “Have you
found me, O my enemy?”

So
how is this story in any way related to hospitality or welcome? Perhaps wine was served at the banquet for
Naboth, but it did him no good. The only
hospitality here is a phony hospitality masking a harmful plot. It is a story of wine out of time.

More
to the point, the story is about power.
Ahab and Jezebel have power.
Naboth has very little power. Ahab
and Jezebel abuse their power, and that is at the heart of this story, abuse of
power. It is literally a story as old as
the Bible. Power is easily abused. When you have a great deal of power, your
inconvenience is easily turned into a need, a need that might be met to the
destruction of others. We could easily
use this story to begin a discussion about the contemporary world, about power
relationships and about how power is being used for good and ill in our world. The story has a significant political
dimension to it, but we are not going to pursue that today. In not pursuing it, let’s at least admit it
is there.

Rather,
I want to refer again this morning, as I did last week, to one of our baptismal
questions. “Will you use the freedom and
power God gives you to resists evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms
they present themselves?” Underlying
this phrasing is a simpler question – “Will you use your freedom and power
well?” Last week I asked that question
about the power of touch. This morning I
want to ask us to think about our power to welcome, our power for hospitality.

It
was in seminary that I first encountered the work of Henri Nouwen. Nouwen was a priest who wrote deeply about
aspects of the Christian spiritual life and Christian ministry. One of his books, Reaching Out, is
subtitled “the three movements of the spiritual life.” He writes about reaching out to our innermost
self – the movement from loneliness to solitude. He writes about reaching to God – the
movement from illusion to prayer. He
writes about reaching out to our fellow human beings – the movement from
hostility to hospitality. About
hospitality, Nouwen writes: Hospitality…
means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and
become a friend instead of an enemy.
Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where
change can take place…. The paradox of
hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but
a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as
created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance
their own dances…. Creating space for
the other is far from an easy task. It
requires hard concentration and articulate work. (51)

When
our congregation started working with the idea of hospitality and welcome, and
formed a group to work on this, I offered Nouwen’s words to us for our
consideration. I will be honest with you
all, members and guest alike, we would like new active participants in our
congregation and we would like new members.
When churches form “hospitality teams” that is part of what they are
hoping for – new active participants and new members. That is o.k., but if that is all we aim for,
we are engaged in recruitment, not hospitality.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they the same.

What
if we all deepened our understanding of and practice of hospitality and
welcome? What if creating a free and
welcoming space was our deepest priority, creating a friendly emptiness where
strangers can discover themselves as created free – free to sing their own
songs, speak their own language, dance their own dances? What if sharing God’s love by creating such
space was our deepest priority? I think
membership will take care of itself.

Let’s
confess that the Church, not this church but the Church, has sometimes been
just a bit like Jezebel. We invite
people to a banquet, but for our own purposes.
Now we are not going to bump people off, but if all we are wanting is
new people for the pews rather than new friends for the journey who will change
us as they are being changed by the Spirit of God, then we are missing the
mark. God has welcomed us in Jesus into
friendship, adventure, new life. We
should welcome others as deeply, giving all space in love.

When
we take hospitality seriously, we extend it into the community. Some of you may have noticed the sign out on
our grounds, right out there on Skyline Parkway. “To our Muslim neighbors, blessed
Ramadan.” Many have made positive
comments about it on social media. I
have had a person, a little puzzled, ask me why we would be doing this. It is an act of hospitality. We are not endorsing everything Muslim with
our sign. We are recognizing that we
share neighborhoods, schools, work places, parent organizations with Muslim
persons and we need to find ways to live and work together for the common good
of our community. Part of hospitality is
wishing others well.

A
rabbi gathered his students around him and asked them a question. “How do we know the exact moment when night
ends and the day begins?” “It’s when,
standing some way away, you can tell a sheep from a dog,” said one. The rabbi frowned. Another piped up, “No, it’s when standing
some way away, you can tell an olive tree from a fig tree.” “That’s not a good definition either,” said
the rabbi. “Well,” the students said,
“when is it?” “When a stranger
approaches, and we think he is our brother, our sister, that is the moment when
night ends and day begins.”

Ahab
and Jezebel abused their power, but they abused it in a particular way. They were inhospitable among other things. They did not recognize Naboth as a brother, a
person with his own song, his own dance.
They failed to give him free space.

Will
you use the freedom and power God gives you, the freedom and power to welcome,
to be hospitable, will you use it well?
Will we use it well? By God’s
grace and Spirit, yes!

Friday, June 3, 2016

In
the late 1970s in the history of rock ‘n’ roll music, there was a movement to
recapture some of the energy of earlier rock ‘n’ roll. You see, some thought the music had become
too indulgent, too many long solos, too much artifice. Of course, there were also people who really
disliked the disco music of the 1970s, too, though in many ways that music
seems delightfully carefree.

So
punk rock and new wave music hit the scene, and among the new wave rockers was
a British musician, Graham Parker. All
this simply to introduce the song from which I stole this morning’s sermon
title – “Passion is No Ordinary Word” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPQWPxfPYKo

Passion
is no ordinary word. Don’t we want some
passion and energy in our lives? Don’t
we want to feel some excitement?
Scanning our culture, part of the appeal of team sports is the avenue
they provide for passion and excitement, even though it is not always
well-channeled. This seems true across
cultures – soccer evokes a great deal of passion in many countries.

In
an interview will Bill Moyers, the scholar Joseph Campbell once said: People say that what we are all seeking is a
meaning for life. I don’t think that’s
what we’re really seeking. I think that
what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life
experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our
innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being
alive. (The Power of Myth, 4-5)

We
want some passion in our lives. We want
to feel alive. Yet passion raises
concerns. Consider our contemporary
political scene. Passions seem to be
boiling over in unhealthy and unhelpful ways.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Presidential nominee for the Republican
party generates a lot of passion. He
draws huge crowds, and on occasion some of his passionate supporters have let
their passion boil over into violence.
There are others passionately opposed to Mr. Trump, and their passion
has boiled over into violence. Bernie
Sanders evokes a great deal of passion, and there have been times when some of
his supporters have let their passion boil over into unhelpful behavior.

Politics
can evoke passion and that passion can boil over into unhelpful and unhealthy
behavior. We see similar things with
athletics. Fans violent toward fans of
an opposing team. Just yesterday in the Duluth News Tribune was the first in a
series of articles on how parents are passionately advocating for their
children with high school coaches, and how this passion has boiled over into
bad behavior – violent threats, interrupted holiday meals.

John
Wesley, the founder of the Methodist stream of the Christian tradition, was
cautious about religious passion. In his
day it was called “enthusiasm.” I am not
sure Wesley would have been so hot on calling our softball team “the Methodist
enthusiasts”!

Wesley
defined “enthusiasm” as “undoubtedly a disorder of the mind… a disorder that
greatly hinders the exercise of reason” (John Wesley’s Forty-Four Sermons,
418). As such, it is “a misfortune, if
not a fault” (418). Enthusiasm in general may be described in some such manner as this: a
religious madness arising from some falsely imagined influence or inspiration
of God. (419) Wesley warned, “beware
that you are not a fiery, persecuting enthusiast” (427).

Yet,
Wesley was also an advocate of a religion of the heart. This past week, Methodists marked “Aldersgate
Day,” a rather well-known incident in the life of John Wesley. Here is the famous quote from his journal
about May 24, 1738. In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate
Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the
Romans. About a quarter before nine,
while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith
in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and an
assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me
from the law of sin and death. (Outler, John Wesley, 66) Wesley thought that there is an affective
dimension to Christian faith and life, a heart dimension, something we could
feel, even feel passionately. In the
same sermon which cautioned against “enthusiasm,” Wesley also wrote: But if you aim at the religion of the heart,
if you talk of ‘righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,’ then it
will not be long before your sentence is passed, ‘Thou are beside thyself’ [quoting
Acts 26:24]

Heart
religion, but with some reasonableness to it.
Passionate faith, but not enthusiasm.
This brings me to this morning’s text.

In
this story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, we can see both an encouragement
of passion and a caution about passion.
Elijah has challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest – which god will
light a fire, an image of some passion.

The
prophets of Baal are full of passionate intensity as they try and get their god
or gods to do something. They pray and
dance. They then cut themselves and bleed. “As midday passed, they raved on until the
time of the offering of oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no
response.” This is the kind of religious
madness Wesley would describe as “enthusiasm.”
There is a lot of leaping and dancing about, a lot of passion, but it is
misdirected and is of no effect.

In
contrast, Elijah is measured and systematic in setting up his altar. He even asks that water be poured onto the
wood. He prays. Then
the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the
stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench.

The
God of Elijah who wins this contest is a God of fire, a God of some
passion. We want to know and experience
and feel this God. We want some of that,
to feel alive, to feel connected to a source of power and grace and love beyond
ourselves. We want to care with passion
for the world, and want a God whose love for the world embraces us and moves us
to love and care.

In
her devotional book Living Well, Sister Joan Chittister writes wisely
about passion, what she calls “enthusiasm.”
There is nothing in life that is
worth doing that is not worth doing with enthusiasm. Anything else is simply a matter of going
through the motions. (51) Enthusiasm ought not to be confused with
hysteria. Enthusiasm is honest, positive
response to a genuine issue. (52) A lack of enthusiasm erodes the heart. People who cannot develop an interest in
anything beyond themselves are people without a life. (55) Enthusiasm
is simply the willingness to try what we never tried before and find it
wonderful. (56)

What
I like best about Chittister’s reflections is the story she tells with
them. She tells of a conversation she
had with a woman who was eighty-one. The
woman was planning on going to San Francisco by train with three other
women. About herself, Joan says, I paused at the very thought of it. I was in my fifties, well-traveled, seasoned,
but absolutely aghast at the thought of going by Amtrak all the way across the
United States at any age, let alone at the age of eighty-one.(48) What comes next, though, completely floors
Sister Joan. She asks the woman how long
she plans to stay in San Francisco. “Oh, I think about three week. After all I’ve never been there before, and I
have no idea how long it will be before I go again.” Go again, at age 81! Joan reflects: There is so much life that is never lived because we lack the
enthusiasm to live it. The problem is
that I have seen apathy – that deep-down, bone-weary lethargy that passes too
often, I think, for calm – and I know that, though it is not death, it is not
life either. (48-49)

We
want a little fire in our lives, without it becoming a destructive blaze.

A
passion in my life is for reading and for books. Portland have one of the most amazing book
stores in the country, and it was only five blocks from my hotel. At Powell’s
I found a book written by a philosopher whose works I appreciate – Robert
Solomon, The Passions. At the end
of the book, Solomon writes: We must give
up that tragic and confused dichotomy between “Reason” and “the passions,” as
if only insanity and self-destructive obsessions could be “passionate,” and as
if only the cold-blooded calculations of unconcerned “Reason” could be
rational. We must instead develop a conception
of rational passions, cultivated
conscientiously as creative means to self-realization, living our lives as
“works of art.” (430)

So
what’s the payoff here?

In
the days since the ending of The United Methodist General Conference, I have
been reading analyses and Facebooks posts, and Twitter tweets. A long-time
acquaintance of mine wrote that he was glad the United Methodist Church was
staying “biblical” by which he meant we had not changed our current language on
homosexuality or marriage. People are
passionate about being biblical, though I am not sure that they always grasp
what a complex idea that is. Others
wrote about The United Methodist Church being bigoted. People are passionate for inclusion. I am passionate for inclusion. I also recognize how complicated that
conversation is globally, when in many African countries even discussing human
sexuality is legally problematic. Now
may be the time for we United Methodists to be passionate about thoughtfulness,
and thoughtful about passion.

But
there are also questions for each of us in all this. Is part of the long-term decline of
well-established Christian churches our failure to be passionate, to share how
being a follower of Jesus Christ makes us feel more alive? Have we sometimes failed to have a little
fire of the Spirit?

What
are you passionate about in being a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, a
disciple of Jesus? What are you
passionate about in being here at this church, about being part of this community
of love and forgiveness, this community that is guided by the teaching and
unconditional love of Jesus and that aspires to live as faithful disciples of
Jesus Christ? How are you balancing
thoughtfulness and passion? How are you
staying aflame in a world that often pours the waters of cynicism even on
thoughtful religious passion?

The
questions are meant for each of us, but also for all of us, together. May God send a little fire of God’s Spirit
into our lives and into our lives together – to rekindle our hearts and souls,
to help us feel more alive, and to reignite our deepest thinking. Amen.